This week, several municipal corporations in Maharashtra banned the sale of meat or forced meat shops to close on Independence Day. In neighbouring Telangana, the Hyderabad civic body directed beef shops and slaughterhouses to remain closed not just on Friday, but also a day later for the Hindu festival Janmashtami.

The authorities in Kalyan-Dombivli – one of the municipal corporations in Maharashtra – claimed that it was a routine action taken to ensure public order, and to observe important national occasions.

But the directives sparked outrage in the state, which is ruled by a Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition, with the Opposition describing the authorities’ actions as “food policing”.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray said that “what we eat on Independence Day is our choice” and that the authorities had no right to interfere.

“Instead of imposing vegetarianism on the citizens, focus on improving the terrible roads and broken civic services,” Thackeray said. “Citizens will eat whatever they want to – vegetarian/non-vegetarian.”

Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) MLA Jitendra Awhad claimed that Maharashtra’s ruling coalition was “fuelling a vegetarian-non-vegetarian divide” after having “exhausted other social controversies”.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis pushed back, claiming that the state was not interested in knowing what people eat. But he defended the directives saying that they were issued in line with a 1988 government resolution allowing the shutting of slaughterhouses on certain days. The municipal bodies had taken the decision themselves, he argued.

The directive in Hyderabad, in Congress-ruled Telangana, was challenged in the Telangana High Court. The municipal corporation said that its order – which did not ban the slaughter of chicken or mutton – has been imposed for more than two decades because of law and order concerns.

Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi said that the decision was “callous and unconstitutional”, questioning the connection between eating meat and celebrating Independence Day. He said most people in Telangana eat meat and that such bans “violate people’s right to liberty, privacy, livelihood, culture, nutrition and religion”.

What Indians eat has been a matter of debate for a long time. But in the last decade it has come to be hotly contested with largely BJP governments deciding to impose meat bans especially during festivals.

There has been push back to such bans. Many have pointed out that, contrary to projections by many Hindutva supporters, Hindus are not a homogeneous community when it comes to eating meat. And India is not a predominantly vegetarian country.

Data proves this. The National Family Health Survey-5 conducted between 2019 and 2021 showed that 83.4% of Indian men and 70.6% of women in the 15-49 age group eat meat.

In fact, Thackeray pointed out that it was a family tradition to offer prawns and fish to the deity during the Navratri festival. When Hindutva accounts criticised him, social media users highlighted that it was customary for some in the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu community – which the Thackerays belong to – to make meat offerings. The community is Hindu, they asserted.

Similarly, eating meat during Durga Puja is common among Bengali Hindus and animal sacrifice is an important ritual for some in the community.

Even Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, a crucial ally of the BJP, struck a discordant note. He said food is “part of an individual’s habit, culture and inheritance and geographical conditions”, and what a person eats was the individual’s choice.

But this did not lead to a rollback of the municipal directives. As long as Hindutva is ascendant in India, the illogic of meat bans is here to stay.

Here is a summary of last week’s other top stories.

Jammu and Kashmir flash flood. The toll from the flash floods in the Union Territory’s Kishtwar district increased to 60 on Friday. Several were missing as rescue operations continued.

A cloudburst took place on Thursday near Chashoti village, which is the last motorable village on the way to the Machail Mata temple. A large number of devotees had gathered in the area for an annual yatra that began on July 25 and was scheduled to end on September 5.

Ensuring free and fair polls? The Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to publish a district-wise list of about 65 lakh voters whose names were deleted from the draft electoral roll during the special intensive revision exercise in Bihar. The court directed the list be published on the websites of the state’s district and chief electoral officers.

The bench told the poll panel to specify that those who submit claims for inclusion in the list can furnish Aadhaar cards.

The court also said the Election Commission must provide the reason for each deletion. Sharing this will improve “voter confidence” in the institution, it added.

The direction was given while listening to petitions challenging the voter roll revision in Bihar ahead of the Assembly polls expected in October or November.

Scroll analysis shows higher exclusion of Hindus than Muslims in Bihar draft voter roll

The order on street dogs. The Supreme Court said that the problems related to the street dog population in Delhi are because of the inaction of local authorities. It made the observation while reserving its order on pleas challenging the directions passed by a two-judge bench on Monday to capture and shift street dogs in Delhi, Noida and Gurugram to shelters within six weeks.

The suo motu case on stray dogs was shifted to a three-judge bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath after some lawyers told Chief Justice BR Gavai that the directions issued on Monday conflicted with previous orders of other benches.

The court order on Monday had triggered protests, with demonstrators arguing that shifting the dogs to inhumane shelters would not solve the problem.

Mohammad Aaquib writes: What the outrage over stray dogs says about the moral compass of middle-class Indians

Also on Scroll last week

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